Stephen Hawking

Hello, my name is Stephen. When I was a little boy, I loved to look up at the night sky. The stars were like tiny, shiny dots of light, and I always wondered about them. I would ask big questions all the time. I wanted to know everything. I would ask, 'How did the whole world begin?' and 'What are stars made of?'. I was born a long, long time ago, in the year 1942. Asking questions was my favorite thing to do, and I never stopped being curious about our big, beautiful world and all the stars in it.

As I grew up, my body got sick. It became very hard for me to walk or even to talk. But that was okay, because I had a lot of help. I had a very cool wheelchair that helped me move around and go wherever I wanted to go. To help me speak, I used a special computer that could talk for me. So even though my body couldn't move very well, my brain was always busy. My mind was whizzing and popping with amazing ideas about space, stars, and how everything works.

My job was to be a thinker. I thought about space and the stars all day long. I wrote books to share all of my big ideas with everyone in the world. I wanted everyone to be able to learn about the stars, just like me. I lived to be 76 years old. People remember me for teaching the world to stay curious. I hope you will always remember to look up at the stars and wonder, too.